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Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide
A recognized Native American scholar and co-founder of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, the largest grassroots, multiracial feminist organization in the country, Andrea Smith (Cherokee) is an emerging leader in progressive political circles. In Conquest, Smith places Native American women at the center of her analysis of sexual violence, challenging both conventional definitions of the term and conventional responses to the problem.
Beginning with the impact of the abuses inflicted on Native American children at state-sanctioned boarding schools from the 1880s to the 1980s, Smith adroitly expands our conception of violence to include environmental racism, population control and the widespread appropriation of Indian cultural practices by whites and other non-natives. Smith deftly connects these and other examples of historical and contemporary colonialism to the high rates of violence against Native American women—the most likely women in the United States to die of poverty-related illnesses, be victims of rape and suffer partner abuse.
Essential reading for scholars and activists, Conquest is the powerful synthesis of Andrea Smith’s intellectual and political work to date. By focusing on the impact of sexual violence on Native American women, Smith articulates an agenda that is compelling to feminists, Native Americans, other people of color and all who are committed to creating viable alternatives to state-based “solutions.”
Beginning with the impact of the abuses inflicted on Native American children at state-sanctioned boarding schools from the 1880s to the 1980s, Smith adroitly expands our conception of violence to include environmental racism, population control and the widespread appropriation of Indian cultural practices by whites and other non-natives. Smith deftly connects these and other examples of historical and contemporary colonialism to the high rates of violence against Native American women—the most likely women in the United States to die of poverty-related illnesses, be victims of rape and suffer partner abuse.
Essential reading for scholars and activists, Conquest is the powerful synthesis of Andrea Smith’s intellectual and political work to date. By focusing on the impact of sexual violence on Native American women, Smith articulates an agenda that is compelling to feminists, Native Americans, other people of color and all who are committed to creating viable alternatives to state-based “solutions.”
272 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2005
About the author
Andrea Lee Smith
5 books91 followersAndrea Smith is a Cherokee intellectual, feminist, and anti-violence activist. Smith's work focuses on issues of violence against women of color and their communities, specifically Native American women.
Along with Nadine Naber, she co-founded INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence in 2000, and she plays a prominent role in its National Planning Committee. INCITE! is a national grassroots organization that engages in direct action and critical dialogue to end violence against women of color and their communities. Smith was also a founding member of the Boarding School Healing Project (BSHP). According to its website, the BSHP "seeks to document Native boarding school abuses so that Native communities can begin healing from boarding school abuses and demand justice." Smith has worked with Amnesty International as a Bunche Fellow, coordinating the research project on sexual violence and American Indian women. In 2005, Smith was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize "as a woman who works daily for peace" in recognition of her research and work regarding violence against women of color in the US.
http://www.boardingschoolhealingproje...
Smith earned her bachelor's degree at Harvard University in Comparative Study of Religion, and her Masters of Divinity at the Union Theological Seminary in 1997. In 2002, she received her Ph.D. in History of Consciousness from UC Santa Cruz. Smith's Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide won the 2005 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award. She is currently a professor of American Culture and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI.
On February 22, 2008, Smith received a negative tenure recommendation from the College of Literature, Science and the Arts at the University of Michigan. This decision has attracted "an unusual degree of attention from scholars, both at Ann Arbor and nationally" and "prompted some to wage an online campaign saying the University's tenure evaluation process discriminates against women of color and interdisciplinary professors."
A statement issued by an anonymous group of students and faculty from the University of Michigan protesting the decision immediately began circulating via email and among feminist blogs. The statement refers to Smith as "one of the greatest indigenous feminist intellectuals of our time" and highlights Smith's relevance as both a scholar and social justice advocate, noting that as "a result of her work, scholars, social service providers, and community-based organizations throughout the United States have shifted from state-focused efforts to more systemic approaches for addressing violence against women." A Facebook group in support of Smith's tenure bid and online petition to University of Michigan provost Teresa Sullivan soon followed.
Along with Nadine Naber, she co-founded INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence in 2000, and she plays a prominent role in its National Planning Committee. INCITE! is a national grassroots organization that engages in direct action and critical dialogue to end violence against women of color and their communities. Smith was also a founding member of the Boarding School Healing Project (BSHP). According to its website, the BSHP "seeks to document Native boarding school abuses so that Native communities can begin healing from boarding school abuses and demand justice." Smith has worked with Amnesty International as a Bunche Fellow, coordinating the research project on sexual violence and American Indian women. In 2005, Smith was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize "as a woman who works daily for peace" in recognition of her research and work regarding violence against women of color in the US.
http://www.boardingschoolhealingproje...
Smith earned her bachelor's degree at Harvard University in Comparative Study of Religion, and her Masters of Divinity at the Union Theological Seminary in 1997. In 2002, she received her Ph.D. in History of Consciousness from UC Santa Cruz. Smith's Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide won the 2005 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award. She is currently a professor of American Culture and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI.
On February 22, 2008, Smith received a negative tenure recommendation from the College of Literature, Science and the Arts at the University of Michigan. This decision has attracted "an unusual degree of attention from scholars, both at Ann Arbor and nationally" and "prompted some to wage an online campaign saying the University's tenure evaluation process discriminates against women of color and interdisciplinary professors."
A statement issued by an anonymous group of students and faculty from the University of Michigan protesting the decision immediately began circulating via email and among feminist blogs. The statement refers to Smith as "one of the greatest indigenous feminist intellectuals of our time" and highlights Smith's relevance as both a scholar and social justice advocate, noting that as "a result of her work, scholars, social service providers, and community-based organizations throughout the United States have shifted from state-focused efforts to more systemic approaches for addressing violence against women." A Facebook group in support of Smith's tenure bid and online petition to University of Michigan provost Teresa Sullivan soon followed.
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December 28, 2022
For all that is right and righteous about what Andrea Smith has to say, there is a lot that is wrong about how she says it:
• Conquest needs a good editor.
"The news about our efforts to struggle against U.S. policies will not reach activists in other countries unless we get that news to them ourselves." (pg. 50) *efforts to struggle???
• Smith has no Cherokee ancestry, and though she has stopped publicly claiming Native American heritage, she still allows others to present her as a "prominent Native American scholar and activist." *While I firmly believe that this in no way discredits her research and activism, it does call into question her character and ethics, not to mention her frequent, unjustifiable use of self-inclusive pronouns like "I" and "WE."
"Can we ask for land rather than monies? Can we call for the repeal of repressive legislation that undermines the sovereignty of Native nations?" (pg. 53)
"...playing Indian is part of an ongoing genocidal project where white people become the inheritors of all that Indians "knew." (pg. 127)
• Almost every injustice cited in Conquest is equated to rape.
"...sexual violence is a tool by which certain peoples become marked as inherently "rapable." These peoples then are violated, not only through direct or sexual assault, but through a wide variety of state policies..." (pg. 3)
"...on the Akwesasne Mohawk reserve in New York, one of the most polluted areas in the country, the PCBs, DDT, Mirex, and HCBs that are dumped into their waters are stored in women's breast milk. Through the rape of the earth, Native women's bodies are raped once again." (pg. 67)
"...spiritual/cultural appropriation constitute a form of sexual violence." (pg. 120)
"...the academic study of Native religious traditions can unwittingly support the paradigm of sexual violence that undergirds the manner in which non-Indians attempt to "know" Indians." (pg. 132)
"The forceful act of gazing at the other, gaining knowledge and control over her by seeing her, is likened to sexual intimacy. Thus, the ethnographic gaze can be understood as the act of sexually possessing a people." (pg. 133)
• There is an implicit, reoccurring theme that the U.S. government, as it currently stands, needs to be overthrown.
"...our overall strategy should not be premised on the notion that the U.S. should or will always continue to exist." (pg. 51)
"...a reproductive justice agenda must make the dismantling of capitalism, white supremacy, and colonialism central to its agenda..." (pg. 104)
"To radically change society, we must build mass movements that can topple current capitalist hierarchy." (pg. 167)
• Smith is an unapologetic anti-vaxer, even going so far as to quote the widely discredited 1999 study linking vaccinations to the rise in autism.
"...vaccines are often given credit for eradicating disease when the illness is often already on the decline because of other environmental factors." (pg. 110)
"Vaccines also expose the body to germs which may negatively impact one's immune system." (pg. 110)
There are literally dozens of other examples I could quote, but this gives you a feel for Smith's general ideology. I don't necessarily disagree with her on many of these issues, but her presentation is an open invitation for far-right fundamentalists to dismiss her as a pretentious radical. There is important information here, but unfortunately much of it is entangled in rant and rhetoric.
• Conquest needs a good editor.
"The news about our efforts to struggle against U.S. policies will not reach activists in other countries unless we get that news to them ourselves." (pg. 50) *efforts to struggle???
• Smith has no Cherokee ancestry, and though she has stopped publicly claiming Native American heritage, she still allows others to present her as a "prominent Native American scholar and activist." *While I firmly believe that this in no way discredits her research and activism, it does call into question her character and ethics, not to mention her frequent, unjustifiable use of self-inclusive pronouns like "I" and "WE."
"Can we ask for land rather than monies? Can we call for the repeal of repressive legislation that undermines the sovereignty of Native nations?" (pg. 53)
"...playing Indian is part of an ongoing genocidal project where white people become the inheritors of all that Indians "knew." (pg. 127)
• Almost every injustice cited in Conquest is equated to rape.
"...sexual violence is a tool by which certain peoples become marked as inherently "rapable." These peoples then are violated, not only through direct or sexual assault, but through a wide variety of state policies..." (pg. 3)
"...on the Akwesasne Mohawk reserve in New York, one of the most polluted areas in the country, the PCBs, DDT, Mirex, and HCBs that are dumped into their waters are stored in women's breast milk. Through the rape of the earth, Native women's bodies are raped once again." (pg. 67)
"...spiritual/cultural appropriation constitute a form of sexual violence." (pg. 120)
"...the academic study of Native religious traditions can unwittingly support the paradigm of sexual violence that undergirds the manner in which non-Indians attempt to "know" Indians." (pg. 132)
"The forceful act of gazing at the other, gaining knowledge and control over her by seeing her, is likened to sexual intimacy. Thus, the ethnographic gaze can be understood as the act of sexually possessing a people." (pg. 133)
• There is an implicit, reoccurring theme that the U.S. government, as it currently stands, needs to be overthrown.
"...our overall strategy should not be premised on the notion that the U.S. should or will always continue to exist." (pg. 51)
"...a reproductive justice agenda must make the dismantling of capitalism, white supremacy, and colonialism central to its agenda..." (pg. 104)
"To radically change society, we must build mass movements that can topple current capitalist hierarchy." (pg. 167)
• Smith is an unapologetic anti-vaxer, even going so far as to quote the widely discredited 1999 study linking vaccinations to the rise in autism.
"...vaccines are often given credit for eradicating disease when the illness is often already on the decline because of other environmental factors." (pg. 110)
"Vaccines also expose the body to germs which may negatively impact one's immune system." (pg. 110)
There are literally dozens of other examples I could quote, but this gives you a feel for Smith's general ideology. I don't necessarily disagree with her on many of these issues, but her presentation is an open invitation for far-right fundamentalists to dismiss her as a pretentious radical. There is important information here, but unfortunately much of it is entangled in rant and rhetoric.
January 17, 2019
eta, 1/17/19: Since I wrote this review, I discovered that Andrea Smith is a white woman masquerading as Native. Please read the letter from Native women academics at this link: https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytod...
----
Smith unpacks politics, economics, culture, sexuality, colonialism, and spirituality in this slim book. It's a searing indictment of the United States' policies toward American Indian people, and the consequences of colonialism upon the bodies of Native people - particularly women; particularly in terms of the systemic and personal violence they withstand.
The book has permanently shifted my perception of organizations I thought were doing good - Planned Parenthood, for example; 501(c) organizations in general - and I'm very aware, all over again, of how many suppositions in my life go unquestioned because of my whiteness, and the privilege attached to that.
There's very little this book *doesn't* touch on - from prison populations to children's vaccines to the intricacies of the criminal justice system to the current environmental crisis, it all, in Smith's hands, relates back to the fact that the United States is built upon the lands of a people against whom a genocide has been waged. Her argument is deft and well-researched, and I can't do it justice in the few lines I have here. Trust me - read this.
----
Smith unpacks politics, economics, culture, sexuality, colonialism, and spirituality in this slim book. It's a searing indictment of the United States' policies toward American Indian people, and the consequences of colonialism upon the bodies of Native people - particularly women; particularly in terms of the systemic and personal violence they withstand.
The book has permanently shifted my perception of organizations I thought were doing good - Planned Parenthood, for example; 501(c) organizations in general - and I'm very aware, all over again, of how many suppositions in my life go unquestioned because of my whiteness, and the privilege attached to that.
There's very little this book *doesn't* touch on - from prison populations to children's vaccines to the intricacies of the criminal justice system to the current environmental crisis, it all, in Smith's hands, relates back to the fact that the United States is built upon the lands of a people against whom a genocide has been waged. Her argument is deft and well-researched, and I can't do it justice in the few lines I have here. Trust me - read this.
October 11, 2012
Smith's account of the many, many ways state and societal violence have been and continue to be perpetrated against indigenous people (focusing mostly on the Americas) is a difficult but necessary read. Seriously, all non-indigenous Americans should read this book. Longer thoughts coming.
eta:Conquest starts with the observation that sexual and reproductive violence against Native women are forms of racial and colonial violence, unpacking the various ways in which sexual violence "serves the goals of colonialism," an examination that Smith argues "forces us to reconsider how we define sexual violence, as well as the strategies we employ to eradicate gender violence." In her analysis, environmental racism and exploitation, forced assimilation/cultural genocide, spiritual appropriation, medical discrimination, and colonialism/empire are all connected to sexual and reprodutive violence against Native people.
Examples:
- Conquest pushes the definition of sexual violence to include reproductive violence and injustice. White/Western medicine has a long history of nonconsensual sterilization of and experimentation on Native bodies. Native women have been disproportionately exposed to more dangerous or experimental forms of birth control, often without their informed consent. Medical discrimination and systemic, racialized poverty mean that Native women and communities have less access to birth control, abortion, and maternal/family health services.
- Smith also explores the impact of environmental racism and exploitation on reproductive and family health in Native communities (“women of color are suffering not only from environmental racism but environmental sexism” - p. 69). The burden of environmental pollution from toxic wastes, weapons testing, workplace exposure, and other sources disproportionately fall on people of color - e.g., reservations and other Native lands are frequent sites of waste dumps, mining for radioactive materials, and nuclear testing. These environmental injustices lead to higher rates of conditions like ovarian cancer, miscarriages and stillbirths, and birth anomalies in Native communities.
- The long history of forced assimilation and cultural genocide through the boarding school system (Native children were taken from their communities to be “educated” into conforming to Christian/Western culture) meant Native youth were subjected to rampant abuses, including a high incidence of sexual abuse. The boarding school system also undermined the stability of Native families and communities, introduced patterns of gendered violence into these communities, and worked to displace traditions that provided Native women with positions of leadership with Western patriarchal norms.
- Smith connects systemic appropriation of Native religious practices to the idea that Native bodies are inherently “rapable.” Appropriation of Native spiritualities is part of white/Western “taking [from Native people] without asking” that assumes the “needs of the taker are paramount and the needs of others are irrelevant, [mirroring] the rape culture of the dominant society” (126).
Smith shows how both colonizing cultures and mainstream social justice movements rely on historical and cultural narrative that requires Native people to "play dead." That is, we systematically pretend that Native Americans are long gone, absent, or vanishing. Indigenous people are either living relics or imagined symbols of a mythical past, which we can then ignore or appropriate the “memory” of as convenient ("Kate Shanley notes that Native peoples are a permanent “present absence” in the U.S. colonial imagination, an “absence” that reinforces at every turn the conviction that Native peoples are indeed vanishing and that the conquest of Native lands is justified.")
This tendency to treat Native communities as "dead" is evident in modern social justice movements, for example, in how mainstream environmentalism doesn’t center Native communities or even form pro-environment alliances with them, instead allying with groups that often have racist, classist, and anti-immigrant agendas (dedicated to “reducing population growth of all peoples in theory and of people of color in reality” - 78). Alarmist rhetoric about overpopulation is often a thin veil for implicit or overt prejudice against communities of color and a desire to restrict their reproduction, growth, and even movements. At the time of the book's writing, e.g., prominent members of the Sierra Club were also members of the anti-immigrant group FAIR; Smith also documents attempts to pressure the Sierra Club into advocating anti-immigrant positions. Meanwhile, mostly white/non-indigenous environmentalist groups often push for land “protection” policies that are harmful to Native people actually living on/off the land in question.
The major example Smith gives of how mainstream activism expects Native women in particular to “play dead” is the failure of both anti-racists/indigenous activists and advocates against domestic violence to center Native women in their work. Conquest calls on activists in both communities to adopt intersectional and community-based approaches to combating racism and gender violence together.
Approaches to gendered violence that rely heavily on state/police intervention and the prison system only address violence after the fact and have limited use in preventing domestic violence or protecting survivors in general. For Native women, Smith argues, these approaches are actively harmful in a culture where Native women, other women of color, and people of color in general are disproportionately and often unjustly incarcerated, and in a culture where state violence (police brutality, racism and sexism in the prison system, etc) are a major cause of and contributor to gender violence in Native communities.
Instead, Smith calls for domestic violence prevention and survivor support strategies that are based in community accountability and redressing economic injustices that make women of color more vulnerable to abuse and less able to leave abusive homes or partners. This model means creating communities that are educated about domestic violence, intervene in abusive situations, hold abusers accountable, and materially support survivors. The long-term goal of such a model would be to build “communities where violence becomes unthinkable” by fostering real communal consequences for and responses to abuse.
One thing I really appreciated about Smith’s take on community-based responses to violence is that she acknowledges the the serious obstacles that exist to putting it into practice effectively:
In addition to this, so much of what allows abusers to get away with violence is community investment in preserving the group. Or rather, a particular understanding of group “safety” that often means that the safety of vulnerable members of the group - often women and children - is treated as less of a priority. What Smith argues for is a reversal of this mindset, to one where the wellbeing and safety of women and youth (rather than the protection of abusers) are seen as central to the health of the community. But this requires a pretty radical cultural shift for many communities. For this reason I have a lot of concerns about the effectiveness of community-based approaches in keeping survivors and vulnerable populations safe and keeping abusers to account (of course, the current system isn’t terribly effective, either).
All in all, Conquest is a great book, persuasively and clearly written. Some historians might be skeptical of how Smith works with chronology and geography, jumping back and forth between different periods and places. I think it's very effective at showing the continuities between the genocide and exploitation of indigenous peoples that we think of as being in the past and the present, global realities of state and interpersonal violence against indigenous people. Conquest raises a lot of thought-provoking questions that the mainstream feminist and anti-violence movements still haven’t started to grapple with, but really need to.
eta:Conquest starts with the observation that sexual and reproductive violence against Native women are forms of racial and colonial violence, unpacking the various ways in which sexual violence "serves the goals of colonialism," an examination that Smith argues "forces us to reconsider how we define sexual violence, as well as the strategies we employ to eradicate gender violence." In her analysis, environmental racism and exploitation, forced assimilation/cultural genocide, spiritual appropriation, medical discrimination, and colonialism/empire are all connected to sexual and reprodutive violence against Native people.
Examples:
- Conquest pushes the definition of sexual violence to include reproductive violence and injustice. White/Western medicine has a long history of nonconsensual sterilization of and experimentation on Native bodies. Native women have been disproportionately exposed to more dangerous or experimental forms of birth control, often without their informed consent. Medical discrimination and systemic, racialized poverty mean that Native women and communities have less access to birth control, abortion, and maternal/family health services.
- Smith also explores the impact of environmental racism and exploitation on reproductive and family health in Native communities (“women of color are suffering not only from environmental racism but environmental sexism” - p. 69). The burden of environmental pollution from toxic wastes, weapons testing, workplace exposure, and other sources disproportionately fall on people of color - e.g., reservations and other Native lands are frequent sites of waste dumps, mining for radioactive materials, and nuclear testing. These environmental injustices lead to higher rates of conditions like ovarian cancer, miscarriages and stillbirths, and birth anomalies in Native communities.
- The long history of forced assimilation and cultural genocide through the boarding school system (Native children were taken from their communities to be “educated” into conforming to Christian/Western culture) meant Native youth were subjected to rampant abuses, including a high incidence of sexual abuse. The boarding school system also undermined the stability of Native families and communities, introduced patterns of gendered violence into these communities, and worked to displace traditions that provided Native women with positions of leadership with Western patriarchal norms.
- Smith connects systemic appropriation of Native religious practices to the idea that Native bodies are inherently “rapable.” Appropriation of Native spiritualities is part of white/Western “taking [from Native people] without asking” that assumes the “needs of the taker are paramount and the needs of others are irrelevant, [mirroring] the rape culture of the dominant society” (126).
Smith shows how both colonizing cultures and mainstream social justice movements rely on historical and cultural narrative that requires Native people to "play dead." That is, we systematically pretend that Native Americans are long gone, absent, or vanishing. Indigenous people are either living relics or imagined symbols of a mythical past, which we can then ignore or appropriate the “memory” of as convenient ("Kate Shanley notes that Native peoples are a permanent “present absence” in the U.S. colonial imagination, an “absence” that reinforces at every turn the conviction that Native peoples are indeed vanishing and that the conquest of Native lands is justified.")
This tendency to treat Native communities as "dead" is evident in modern social justice movements, for example, in how mainstream environmentalism doesn’t center Native communities or even form pro-environment alliances with them, instead allying with groups that often have racist, classist, and anti-immigrant agendas (dedicated to “reducing population growth of all peoples in theory and of people of color in reality” - 78). Alarmist rhetoric about overpopulation is often a thin veil for implicit or overt prejudice against communities of color and a desire to restrict their reproduction, growth, and even movements. At the time of the book's writing, e.g., prominent members of the Sierra Club were also members of the anti-immigrant group FAIR; Smith also documents attempts to pressure the Sierra Club into advocating anti-immigrant positions. Meanwhile, mostly white/non-indigenous environmentalist groups often push for land “protection” policies that are harmful to Native people actually living on/off the land in question.
The major example Smith gives of how mainstream activism expects Native women in particular to “play dead” is the failure of both anti-racists/indigenous activists and advocates against domestic violence to center Native women in their work. Conquest calls on activists in both communities to adopt intersectional and community-based approaches to combating racism and gender violence together.
Approaches to gendered violence that rely heavily on state/police intervention and the prison system only address violence after the fact and have limited use in preventing domestic violence or protecting survivors in general. For Native women, Smith argues, these approaches are actively harmful in a culture where Native women, other women of color, and people of color in general are disproportionately and often unjustly incarcerated, and in a culture where state violence (police brutality, racism and sexism in the prison system, etc) are a major cause of and contributor to gender violence in Native communities.
Instead, Smith calls for domestic violence prevention and survivor support strategies that are based in community accountability and redressing economic injustices that make women of color more vulnerable to abuse and less able to leave abusive homes or partners. This model means creating communities that are educated about domestic violence, intervene in abusive situations, hold abusers accountable, and materially support survivors. The long-term goal of such a model would be to build “communities where violence becomes unthinkable” by fostering real communal consequences for and responses to abuse.
One thing I really appreciated about Smith’s take on community-based responses to violence is that she acknowledges the the serious obstacles that exist to putting it into practice effectively:
Sometimes it is easy to underestimate the amount of intervention that is required before a perpetrator can really change his behavior. Often a perpetrator will subject her/himself to community accountability measures but eventuality will tire of them. If community members are not vigilant about holding the perpetrator accountable _for years_ and instead assume he or she is 'cured,' the perpetrator can turn a community of accountability into a community that enables abuse. (164)
In addition to this, so much of what allows abusers to get away with violence is community investment in preserving the group. Or rather, a particular understanding of group “safety” that often means that the safety of vulnerable members of the group - often women and children - is treated as less of a priority. What Smith argues for is a reversal of this mindset, to one where the wellbeing and safety of women and youth (rather than the protection of abusers) are seen as central to the health of the community. But this requires a pretty radical cultural shift for many communities. For this reason I have a lot of concerns about the effectiveness of community-based approaches in keeping survivors and vulnerable populations safe and keeping abusers to account (of course, the current system isn’t terribly effective, either).
All in all, Conquest is a great book, persuasively and clearly written. Some historians might be skeptical of how Smith works with chronology and geography, jumping back and forth between different periods and places. I think it's very effective at showing the continuities between the genocide and exploitation of indigenous peoples that we think of as being in the past and the present, global realities of state and interpersonal violence against indigenous people. Conquest raises a lot of thought-provoking questions that the mainstream feminist and anti-violence movements still haven’t started to grapple with, but really need to.
December 13, 2017
Review originally posted on A Skeptical Reader.
Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide by Andrea Smith looks at the effects and the effectiveness of colonization of the indigenous people. It concentrates primarily on the violence committed against women and children, as they remain most vulnerable members of the community, but Smith also addresses the overarching concern of contemporary genocide of the Native communities.
This isn’t an easy book to read by any means, but a really important one to consider. Among many other concerns, a few of the conversations in the book revolve around assimilation practices at boarding/residential schools, medical experimentation, indigenous women’s reproductive health (such as the promotion of abortion to reduce population and infertility operations performed without consent), sexual appropriation, and more. The last quarter of the book also brings up the topic of violence within miniority communities and how women of color are often asked to tolerate domestic violence to present a unified front against the white oppressor.
Most of my familiarity with indigenous history is covered in the earlier chapters, particularly the attempts of colonizers to dehumanize indigenous peoples. Thankfully, this is a chapter that was briefly addressed in early American history courses, if still unsatisfactorily. An interesting layer I hadn’t uncovered myself was the one where Smith showcases the snowball effect of white men attempting to throw indigenous women off the pedestal they maintained in native communities, and how it ultimately affected white women into shunning the native women and thus, they too fell into the trap of playing damsels in distress. Smith emphasizes,
Because indigenous peoples can’t possibly have better societies than the white man’s, correct? What a saddening history for all womenkind.
The last quarter of the book was something I enjoyed the most because in many ways I found myself relating to it a lot. As a woman of color, the decision to ‘let go’ of the inner-community violence for the greater cause is often a harrowing one. While I agree with Smith that racism and sexism are conjoined like grape vines, often violence against women of color is undercut and ignored by the mainstream advocates that only enforces the racial prejudice of our society.
Similarly, she also touches on the importance of inclusivity in communities of color. A small section which looked at the struggle for reparations points out that African Americans asking for monetary reparations are ignoring the fact that this will only cut into more indigenous land. Her suggestion, which I wholeheartedly support, is to work together and find a better way to reconcile our past. She writes, “simply paying a lump sum for the injustices it has perpetrated and continues to perpetrate, the U.S. can absolve itself of any responsibility to transform these institutionalized structures white supremacy” (53). Realistically, monetary payment won’t fix the psychologically damaged states of our communities so what we need is perhaps a more sociologically beneficial approach. Sadly, while I found her solution rather exciting, she fails to properly lay out the basis for how we may achieve such a goal.
Likewise, indigenous people are also often seen at the forefront of anti-immigration debates and while the nationalists would have one convinced that this is simply a shared belief to protect the American landscape, this attitude can only backfire on indigenous peoples themselves. By aligning with anti-immigration parties, they are only reinforcing the US sovereignty over all land. She states this as a matter of self-preservation in the end, which I didn’t care for, but her point isn’t wrong.
However, readers should be aware that this book is slightly old. Majority of the events relayed in the book are anywhere from twenty to thirty years old. While I certainly don’t think we’ve made huge leaps since then, especially in the United States, I found the outdate nature of the book bothersome in that I still have no information on the ongoing politics. It’s not a reason to pass on this book entirely, but be aware that this might hinder the reader’s ability to be up-to-date on the events discussed.
Another reason this book isn’t always such an excellent read is because the writing style and form is quite weak. At times the book reads more like an introductory essay written by a college student. One of the worst errors you can commit while writing an academic paper is to begin your argument with any phase reminiscent of ‘here I shall discuss…’. She does this often and not only is distracting, it’s also something that just felt unprofessional. Don’t tell what you’re going to write about, show me it. The quoting could’ve used some culling as well since she also has a pattern of paraphrasing something by someone and then also adding the actual quote in itself. One doesn’t need both—one or the other should be sufficient.
Conquest is a good book, if at times a bit difficult to get through given the topic. I didn’t always see eye to eye with Smith on everything, but it’s a good place for me to start learning more.
A nation is not conquered until the hearts of the women are on the ground. (33)
Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide by Andrea Smith looks at the effects and the effectiveness of colonization of the indigenous people. It concentrates primarily on the violence committed against women and children, as they remain most vulnerable members of the community, but Smith also addresses the overarching concern of contemporary genocide of the Native communities.
This isn’t an easy book to read by any means, but a really important one to consider. Among many other concerns, a few of the conversations in the book revolve around assimilation practices at boarding/residential schools, medical experimentation, indigenous women’s reproductive health (such as the promotion of abortion to reduce population and infertility operations performed without consent), sexual appropriation, and more. The last quarter of the book also brings up the topic of violence within miniority communities and how women of color are often asked to tolerate domestic violence to present a unified front against the white oppressor.
Most of my familiarity with indigenous history is covered in the earlier chapters, particularly the attempts of colonizers to dehumanize indigenous peoples. Thankfully, this is a chapter that was briefly addressed in early American history courses, if still unsatisfactorily. An interesting layer I hadn’t uncovered myself was the one where Smith showcases the snowball effect of white men attempting to throw indigenous women off the pedestal they maintained in native communities, and how it ultimately affected white women into shunning the native women and thus, they too fell into the trap of playing damsels in distress. Smith emphasizes,
“…in order to colonize the people whose society was not hierarchical, colonizers must first naturalize hierarchy through instituting patriarchy. Patriarchal gender violence is the process by which colonizers inscribe hierarchy and domination on the bodies of the colonized…
Apparently, Native woman can only be free while under the dominion of white men, and both Native and white women have to be protected from Indian men rather than from white men” (23).
Because indigenous peoples can’t possibly have better societies than the white man’s, correct? What a saddening history for all womenkind.
The last quarter of the book was something I enjoyed the most because in many ways I found myself relating to it a lot. As a woman of color, the decision to ‘let go’ of the inner-community violence for the greater cause is often a harrowing one. While I agree with Smith that racism and sexism are conjoined like grape vines, often violence against women of color is undercut and ignored by the mainstream advocates that only enforces the racial prejudice of our society.
Similarly, she also touches on the importance of inclusivity in communities of color. A small section which looked at the struggle for reparations points out that African Americans asking for monetary reparations are ignoring the fact that this will only cut into more indigenous land. Her suggestion, which I wholeheartedly support, is to work together and find a better way to reconcile our past. She writes, “simply paying a lump sum for the injustices it has perpetrated and continues to perpetrate, the U.S. can absolve itself of any responsibility to transform these institutionalized structures white supremacy” (53). Realistically, monetary payment won’t fix the psychologically damaged states of our communities so what we need is perhaps a more sociologically beneficial approach. Sadly, while I found her solution rather exciting, she fails to properly lay out the basis for how we may achieve such a goal.
Likewise, indigenous people are also often seen at the forefront of anti-immigration debates and while the nationalists would have one convinced that this is simply a shared belief to protect the American landscape, this attitude can only backfire on indigenous peoples themselves. By aligning with anti-immigration parties, they are only reinforcing the US sovereignty over all land. She states this as a matter of self-preservation in the end, which I didn’t care for, but her point isn’t wrong.
However, readers should be aware that this book is slightly old. Majority of the events relayed in the book are anywhere from twenty to thirty years old. While I certainly don’t think we’ve made huge leaps since then, especially in the United States, I found the outdate nature of the book bothersome in that I still have no information on the ongoing politics. It’s not a reason to pass on this book entirely, but be aware that this might hinder the reader’s ability to be up-to-date on the events discussed.
Another reason this book isn’t always such an excellent read is because the writing style and form is quite weak. At times the book reads more like an introductory essay written by a college student. One of the worst errors you can commit while writing an academic paper is to begin your argument with any phase reminiscent of ‘here I shall discuss…’. She does this often and not only is distracting, it’s also something that just felt unprofessional. Don’t tell what you’re going to write about, show me it. The quoting could’ve used some culling as well since she also has a pattern of paraphrasing something by someone and then also adding the actual quote in itself. One doesn’t need both—one or the other should be sufficient.
Conquest is a good book, if at times a bit difficult to get through given the topic. I didn’t always see eye to eye with Smith on everything, but it’s a good place for me to start learning more.
March 2, 2021
DISCLAIMER: Andrea Lee Smith is a fraud. She has claimed time and time again to be Cherokee when the academic world and scholars of the Cherokee nation have exposed her identity as false. She is a white woman, and a fraud.
If you want to learn about the history of abuses, mistreatment, massacre, and cultural genocide of the Native Americans, this is not the book for it. Smith relies on unreliable sources, twisted narratives, and simply false statements in order to get her narrative out. She goes on extremely long tangents about vaccines (note: she is an anti-vaxxer), politics, and pharmaceuticals when she should be focusing on the topic at hand, which is supposed to be a gendered study of the modern Native American experience (EDIT: I concede that the entire experience IS political, including medical experiences). Her writing is all over the place. In one example, she spends the entire book writing about Native men and women in a binary way, and then doing a 180 in Chapter 8 (near the end of the book) talking about multiple genders in the Native American community. She also doesn't seem to understand that "native" or "Indian" is a blanket term and does not even begin to explain the complex diversity of the various indigenous tribes and nations of America. She blames the US for everything, even going so far as to say that George Bush was responsible for creating homophobia and sexism abroad in the Middle East, which is demonstrably false. She twists police reports to fit her narrative, in one case writing that a Native woman was shot to death by police after calling about being domestically abused. A quick Google search revealed that the woman was shot once without intent to kill (Mountie training protocol calls for a shot to centre mass), because she was approaching the single officer brandishing a large butcher's knife, and was not compliant when told to lower her weapon. The fact that this woman is a racial fraud and criticizes women who are ACTUALLY some percentage Cherokee, as well as dedicates an entire chapter to white appropriation of Native traditions, is beyond hypocritical.
Do not waste your time with this book, or any literature by Andrea Lee Smith. If you want a more authentic source written by an ACTUAL Native American, I suggest you look elsewhere.
If you want to learn about the history of abuses, mistreatment, massacre, and cultural genocide of the Native Americans, this is not the book for it. Smith relies on unreliable sources, twisted narratives, and simply false statements in order to get her narrative out. She goes on extremely long tangents about vaccines (note: she is an anti-vaxxer), politics, and pharmaceuticals when she should be focusing on the topic at hand, which is supposed to be a gendered study of the modern Native American experience (EDIT: I concede that the entire experience IS political, including medical experiences). Her writing is all over the place. In one example, she spends the entire book writing about Native men and women in a binary way, and then doing a 180 in Chapter 8 (near the end of the book) talking about multiple genders in the Native American community. She also doesn't seem to understand that "native" or "Indian" is a blanket term and does not even begin to explain the complex diversity of the various indigenous tribes and nations of America. She blames the US for everything, even going so far as to say that George Bush was responsible for creating homophobia and sexism abroad in the Middle East, which is demonstrably false. She twists police reports to fit her narrative, in one case writing that a Native woman was shot to death by police after calling about being domestically abused. A quick Google search revealed that the woman was shot once without intent to kill (Mountie training protocol calls for a shot to centre mass), because she was approaching the single officer brandishing a large butcher's knife, and was not compliant when told to lower her weapon. The fact that this woman is a racial fraud and criticizes women who are ACTUALLY some percentage Cherokee, as well as dedicates an entire chapter to white appropriation of Native traditions, is beyond hypocritical.
Do not waste your time with this book, or any literature by Andrea Lee Smith. If you want a more authentic source written by an ACTUAL Native American, I suggest you look elsewhere.
July 24, 2008
Andrea Smith is brilliant and while i found some of this book to be a bit didactic mostly I think her writing is clear and straightforward. And boy is she pissed. With good reason.
January 10, 2017
informative and well written! Nothing special to say about it!
August 6, 2014
Assigning this book as a "capstone" reading for an undergrad course I'm teaching in the fall that examines US health movements in the twentieth century through an oppression/resistance lens.
Smith's book brings it all together -- environmental justice, sexual violence, poverty, medical experiments, forced sterilization and other issues of reproductive justice, immigrant health, health care access, etc. -- and fills in the gaps left by our other reading assignments, particularly in terms of social movement organizations (the good, the bad, and the ugly) and community resistance.
I'll agree with the other reviewers: everyone should read this book.
Smith's book brings it all together -- environmental justice, sexual violence, poverty, medical experiments, forced sterilization and other issues of reproductive justice, immigrant health, health care access, etc. -- and fills in the gaps left by our other reading assignments, particularly in terms of social movement organizations (the good, the bad, and the ugly) and community resistance.
I'll agree with the other reviewers: everyone should read this book.
July 16, 2020
smith makes a lot of really important arguments regarding how state, societal, and sexual violence thrust upon Indigenous women carry on the legacies of colonialism in the modern era. HOWEVER, apparently she pretended to be a Cherokee woman which doesn't necessarily disprove her research but certainly points to a lack of ethical conduct and positionality in her work??? which is gross
https://indiancountrytoday.com/archiv...
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2...
https://indiancountrytoday.com/archiv...
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2...
May 25, 2007
The title says it. Andrea Smith writes with clarity and delivers her arguments with powerful evidence that can sometimes be very disturbing to read. After reading it, it feels like a central piece that was once missing in history's great puzzle is finally in place. She makes connections between feminism, current U.S. politics, history, environmental justice, and human rights. I would recommend this excellent book to everyone.
July 3, 2017
There's some good stuff in here. The portions about Native Americans and the criminal justice system seem particularly timely.
The strength of this book is probably as a summary of (semi) current issues and activist approaches to problems facing indigenous women and their communities. I'm not sure that much is original here: most important points are citations to others.
A couple things did bother me: despite the attempts at intersectional approaches, I found many generalizations that were undertheorized, lacked nuance, were inaccurate, or were missed opportunities to correctly diagnose/describe the structural issues at play. A few (of many) examples: repeats anti-vaccine rhetoric uncritically to bolster emotional appeal to medical experimentation, critiques the "energy independence" argument made by resource extractors but fails to see how the application of eminent domain and issues around pipelines and fracking has impacted all poor rural communities (i.e. sacrifice zones), and seems attached to a strong theory about the inherent corruption of American statehood. In particular, the discussion of historical native societies seems...prelapsarian...and historically uninformed except in the broadest strokes.
Additionally, her critiques of appropriation (especially by religious scholars), the harm caused by "professionals" in the field who support their own careers first, mentions of whites "playing indian", and the continuous use of "we", read ironically after last year's public refutations of her long-asserted claims of native identity.
Still, a lot of the good work summarized in this book is based on the work and thoughts of smart Native scholars and women of color activists--and a lot of it is worth thinking about and enacting. I'll probably get more out of the bibliography than I'll use from the text.
The strength of this book is probably as a summary of (semi) current issues and activist approaches to problems facing indigenous women and their communities. I'm not sure that much is original here: most important points are citations to others.
A couple things did bother me: despite the attempts at intersectional approaches, I found many generalizations that were undertheorized, lacked nuance, were inaccurate, or were missed opportunities to correctly diagnose/describe the structural issues at play. A few (of many) examples: repeats anti-vaccine rhetoric uncritically to bolster emotional appeal to medical experimentation, critiques the "energy independence" argument made by resource extractors but fails to see how the application of eminent domain and issues around pipelines and fracking has impacted all poor rural communities (i.e. sacrifice zones), and seems attached to a strong theory about the inherent corruption of American statehood. In particular, the discussion of historical native societies seems...prelapsarian...and historically uninformed except in the broadest strokes.
Additionally, her critiques of appropriation (especially by religious scholars), the harm caused by "professionals" in the field who support their own careers first, mentions of whites "playing indian", and the continuous use of "we", read ironically after last year's public refutations of her long-asserted claims of native identity.
Still, a lot of the good work summarized in this book is based on the work and thoughts of smart Native scholars and women of color activists--and a lot of it is worth thinking about and enacting. I'll probably get more out of the bibliography than I'll use from the text.
December 23, 2007
Simply amazing. It focuses on the subtitle (sexual violence and the American Indian genocide) but broadens what sexual violence means. It speaks of the poisoning of the environment, the (mis)management of the land/"wild", the introduction of alcohol, the squashing of native spirituality, the "othering" of a people... everyone should read this.
Read
April 1, 2009Reviewed here.
August 24, 2015
Re-read on the heels of Luana Ross' "Inventing the Savage: The Social Construction of Native American Criminality" and the two are an excellent pairing in that order. Smith cites Ross and her material dovetails and is a modern and expanded off shoot of most of Ross's points. Discovered that I had apparently taken notes on my Ipad from the first time I read it. Expanded them and they are included below.
Introduction
Thesis: "This book will focus particularly on sexual violence as a tool of patriarchy and colonialism in native communities, both historically and today." (2) this book is also "an examination of how sexual violence serves the goals of colonialism (and) forces us to reconsider how we define sexual violence as well as the strategies we employe to eradicate gender violence." Page 3
Gender violence is the specific tool of racism and colonialism– "Colonial relationships are themselves gendered and sexualized".
"An examination of how sexual violence serves the goals of colonialism forces us to reconsider how we define sexual violence, as well as the strategies we employee to eradicate gender violence." (3)
Chapter 1 outlines how colonizers have historically used sexual violence as a primary tool of genocide, it also provides the theoretical framework for the rest of the book arguments sexual violence is a tool by which certain people become marked as rapable.
Page 7 -"Rape as "nothing more or less" Than a tool of Patriarchal control undergirds the philosophy of the white-dominated women's anti-violence movement."
Chapter 2 focuses on US and Canadian and American Indian boarding school policies which are largely responsible for epidemic rates of sexual violence in need of communities today."
There is a clear connection between the violence present in modern-day Native communities and the advent of the boarding school. Smith notes that When abuse victims are asked to Draw their family trees outlining the violence that has occurred within their families, the first generation that perpetrated violence usually the first generation to Have attended boarding schools.
Page 51 - boarding school violence is a State sanctioned human rights violation.
Page 54- Makes a call for a global reparations movement that unites all colonized peoples.
Chapter 3 analyzes how "environmental racism can be seen as a form of sexual violence against indigenous peoples."
Page 55-the same Colonial patriarchal Mind that seeks to control the sexuality of women and indigenous peoples also seeks to control nature."
Page 57- marginalized communities suffer the brunt of environmental destruction and racism so that mainstream communities don't have to suffer the consequences."
Page 62-"Rhetoric of environmentalists in terms of concern for earth masks other issues of racism and colonialism. "
Page 63 -call to eradicate The dualistic identity between humans and nature.
Chapter 4 looks at "contemporary manifestations of what I would call state-sponsored forms of sexual violence in racist reproductive policies." The author also argues that "the current "pro-choice" framework that undergirds the mainstream reproductive rights movement is in adequate for addressing the attacks on the reproductive rights of indigenous women, women of color, poor women, and women with disabilities."ter 5 examines "medical experimentation in native communities."
Chapter 6 "suggests that we can see spiritual appropriation as a form of sexual violence and explores how colonial ideology attempts to transform Native spiritualities from a site of healing to a site of sex sexual exploitation."
Chapter 7 "discusses what strategies for Eradicating gender violence follow from the analysis set forth in this book. it is clear That the state has a prominent role in perpetrating violence against Native women in particular and women of color in general."
Chapter 8" by examining Holland antivirus strategy that addresses the violence required antiviolence advocates to organize against US empire. If we acknowledge the state as a perpetrator of violence against women and the perpetrator of genocide against indigenous peoples we are challenged to imagine alternative forms of governance that do not presume the continuing existence of the US in Particular and the nation-state in general."
***
Chapter 1 – Sexual Violence as a Tool of Genocide
8 – "when a native woman suffers abuse, this abuse is an attack on her identity as a woman and an attack on her identity as Native. The issues of colonial, race, and gender oppression cannot be separated."
- Ann Stoler argues "that racism far from being a reaction to crisis in which racial others are scapegoated for social ills, is a permanent part of the social fabric."
9 – Kate Shanley "notes that native peoples are a permanent "present absence" in the US colonial imagination, and "absence" that reinforces at every turn the conviction that native peoples are indeed vanishing and that the conquest of native lands is justified."
– Need them bodies are a pollution which the colonial body must constantly purify itself against.
10 – Smith equates dirty bodies as "rape-able" bodies---> prostitutes are rapeable because their bodies are seen as violable.
11– Natives are also viewed as not quite real people which is also a set up for rape. When bodies are seen as dirty and sinful it becomes a sin to be who you are… Indian… Which leads to self-destruction.
12– Abuse has become so internalized within the indigenous community that rape is viewed as "traditional" by some Indians.
14 – Franz Fanon notes that these destructive behaviors are direct result of the colonial system.
15 – Women are important countercultural figures - their subjugation represent colonial victories in the fields of economic culture and political colonization.
16 – dysfunctional systems are maintained through pervasive systematic denial
17 – typically the women who are targeted "for destruction were those most independent from Patriarchal Authority: single women, windows, and healers."
20 – wife battering among the Ojibway began when their ability to live as Ojibwas was was banned and alcohol introduced.
23 – colonizers knew that they had to subjugate need women to succeed they did so by first establishing a system of patriarchal hierarchy.
24 – somewhat ironically "feminism is tied to colonial conquest - white women's liberation is founded upon the destruction of supposedly patriarchal need of societies."
25 – "assimilation into white society only increased native women's vulnerability to violence."
30 – victim blaming "the general response of the police to these murders is to blame the victim by arguing that their sex workers are lesbians, intense, inherently rapeable."
31 – "in Ex Parte Crow Dog (1883), the Supreme Court recognized the authority of Indian tribes over criminal jurisdiction on Indian lands. In response, the US passed the Major Crimes Act (1885) which mandated that certain "major crimes" committed in Indian country must be adjudicated through the federal justice system."
32 – "because rape falls under the Major Crimes Act, tribes are generally reliant upon the federal governments to prosecute sexual assault cases.… and because sexual assault is covered under the Major Crimes Act many tribes have not developed codes to address the problem in those rape cases the federal government declines to prosecute." Thus, many US policies and laws have codified rape of native women.
Chapter 2 – Boarding School Abuses and the Case for Reparations
36 – more than 100,000 native kids attended boarding schools the idea was to civilize or exterminate them.
37– 8 off reservation boarding schools are open today, 52 BIA boarding schools on reservations remain open.
"The primary role of this education for Indian girls was to inculcate patriarchal norms into native communities so that women would lose their place of leadership in native communities."
38 – "the Indian Child Protection Act of 1990 was passed to provide a registry for sexual offenders in Indian country, mandate a reporting system, provide BIA and IHS rigid guidelines for doing background checks on prospective employees, and provide education to parents, school officials, and law enforcement on how to recognize sexual abuse. However this law was never sufficiently funded or implemented, and child sexual abuse rates have been dramatically increasing in Indian country while they have remained stable for the general population."
41 – "in 1978, Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act which allows tribes to determine the placement of children taken from their homes. During the Congressional hearings for this act, Congress reported that 25% of all Indian children were in either foster care, adoptive homes, or boarding schools. … The hearings also found that the reasons children were taken from their homes were often vague and generally ethnocentric." Such as children "running wild". "Native families were and are often targeted because they did not fit the dominant nuclear family norm."
43 – abuse, both sexual and physical, became endemic in indigenous communities after the boarding schools.
49 – "...compensation does not end the colonial relationship between the US and indigenous nations. The struggle for a native sovereignty is a struggle for control over land and resources, rather than financial compensation for past and continuing wrongs."
Political sovereignty cannot be achieved without economic sovereignty.
51 – "No amount or type of reparations will "decolonize" us if we do not address oppressive behaviors that we have internalized."
52 – "...for native peoples in particular, there has never been a separation of church and state.…even today, made of people still do not have constitutional protection for their spiritual practices."
52–53 – Smith argues "If boarding school policies and the impact of these policies were recognized as human rights violations, some of the same attached talking about these issues would be removed, and communities could begin to heal."
54 – Smith calls for a global reparation movement that unites all colonized peoples and challenges the global economic system.
Chapter 3 – rape of the land
55 – "the connection between the colonization of native peoples bodies – particularly need women's bodies – a native lands is not simply metaphorical.… The colonial/patriarchal mind that seeks to control the sexuality of women and indigenous peoples also seeks to control nature."
56 – "this notion that need of people did not properly use land and hence had no title to it forms the basis of the "doctrine of discovery" which is the foundation of much US case law relating to Indian claims. This principle as articulated in Johnson and Graham's Lessee v. William McIntosh (1823) how old that the US federal government holds "Exclusive right to extinguish the Indian title of occupancy, either by purchase or conquest" by rate of discovery." "According to the Supreme Court, "the title by conquest is acquired and maintained by force. The conquer prescribes its limits."
57 – "marginalized communities suffer the primary brunt of environmental destruction so that other communities can remain in denial about the effects of environmental degradation." The examples given are: the pesticide exposure to Latino farmworkers which causes 300,000 pesticide related illnesses each year, and US nuclear waste storage.
60 - In 1903, it is ruled that US Congress has full plenary power of native peoples and lands. Lonewolf v. Hitchcock
63 - "It is racist and imperialist to look at the people who are dying now from environmental degradation (generally people of color and poor people) and say that it is a good thing that the earth is cleansing itself."
The AIDS crisis in Africa is given as another example that certain populations are seen as inherently dirty or polluted and therefore expendable.
69 – "medical research often conveniently overlooks the environmental causes of disease, placing the blame on native peoples themselves. Governments and multinational corporations are then left on accountable for their policies of environmental contamination. Native bodies will continue to be seen as expendable an inherently violable as long as they continue to stand in the way of the theft of native lands."
70 – colonialism has interfered with the natives natural methods of birth control and capitalist corporations push formula over breastmilk.
71 – "Unfortunately rather than look at the root causes of environmental destruction, poverty, and rapid population growth, population alarm a scapegoat "overpopulation" as the primary cause of all these problems, allowing corporations and governments to remain unaccountable."
People of color, indigenous peoples, and the impoverished, often in the global South, are made out to be the wrong sort of people who cause environmental damage to overpopulation but their impact pills to the damage done by multinational corporations and the World Bank.
Chapter 4 – "Better dead than pregnant" – the colonization of native women's reproductive health
79 – women of color are seen as particularly threatening as they have the ability to reproduce. Hence Andrew Jackson's order to exterminate native women and children. "Nits make lice"
81 – native women and poor women became targets of population control through "elective" sterilization procedures implemented in US hospitals during the 1970s and was paid for by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
82– At least 5% of all native women of childbearing age were sterilized between 1973 and 1976 in the United States. Some organizations report this number between 25 and as high as 50%.
85 – Peru sterilized around 200,000 indigenous women, only 10% of the sterilizations were done voluntarily and with informed consent.
88–89 – hormonal birth control, the safety of which is debated, has also been widely used to control poor and indigenous underclasses.
96 – despite the fact that governments have widely used sterilization and contraception to control indigenous populations the IHS will not provide abortions accept under limited circumstances. Furthermore there is evidence that doctors withheld anesthesia in order to teach their patients a lesson about getting pregnant and to encourage more women to get sterilized.
98– for native women "choice" is often an illusion. For both men and women the fight for self-determination and sovereignty in health care decisions is real and problematic.
Smith highlights how complicated uncritically adopting the pro-choice narrative is, and that organizations that pro-choice activists see as positive and supportive of women, have complicated pasts. For example, Planned Parenthood ground of the eugenics movement and continues to see family planning in the context of population control. Thus, Smith advocates rejecting the pro-choice framework. She sees "such a strategy would enable us to fight for reproductive justice as part of a larger social justice strategy.
104 – Suggests that reproductive justice must also include dismantling of capitalism, wait supremacy and colonialism. Single issue campaigns are not useful.
Chapter 5 – "natural laboratories": medical experimentation in native communities
111-113 - The medical community has a history of using indigenous populations as test subjects to discover problems in medical trials in order to use that information to benefit other, i.e. dominant, populations.
114- experiments were done to children without parental consent because the state was in charge of children at boarding schools and away from the visible community.
115 – Smith cites Luana Ross on the use of Thorazine to keep Indian women, and prisons.
"since 1997, 16 of the 49 IHS hospitals did not meet the minimum standards in one or more areas set by the joint commission on accreditation of healthcare organizations, which monitors national quality standards for hospitals."
116- "bio colonialism represents yet another way in which governments use Indians as objects of white people." Fairstein is the expendable guinea pigs of the colonizers - they are seen to deserve rape, destruction, and mutilation.
Chapter 6 – spiritual appropriation of sexual violence
120 – knowledge about someone is power over them there for withholding info is an active resistance.
120-121 - It is falsely believed that many people oppress indigenous people from lack of understanding or value of native cultures; however, "the primary reason for the continuing genocide of native peoples have less to do with ignorance and more to do with material conditions… Indians occupy land resources the dominant society wants.… The larger society will never become educated about Indians because it is not in their economic interest to do so."
122 – courts do not recognize the difference between belief centered spiritualities and land-based spiritualities. The failure to recognize the importance of land for indigenous spirituality not only leads to the divorce of Indians from their land, but in essence to cultural genocide because Alienates them from their beliefs.
"When the dominant society disconnects need of spiritual practices from their land basis, it undermines native peoples' claim that the protection of the land base is integral to the survival of native peoples and hence undermined their claims to sovereignty. Such appropriation is prevalent in a wide variety of cultural and spiritual practices – from New Agers claiming to be Indians in former lives to Christians adopting native spiritual forms to further their missionizing efforts."
123 – native knowledge has become appropriated and patented by multinational corporations and by outsiders i.e. non-natives. It is frequently seen as public property and not as indigenous intellectual or cultural property.
"Non-natives feel justified in appropriating native spirituality and native identity because they do not believe existing native communities are capable of independently preserving native cultural practices."
132–133 - Smith warns academics to be careful of the Ethnographic Gaze - for outsiders to be wary of the appropriate protocols when dealing with indigenous peoples.
Chapter 7 – Anti colonial responses to gender violence
137 – "Before native peoples fight for the future of their nations, they must ask themselves, who is included in the nation?"
138 – "according to the US department of justice statistics, Indian women suffer death rates twice as high as any other women in this country from domestic violence. We are clearly not surviving as long as issues of gender violence go unaddressed."
"We must understand that attacks on native women status are themselves attacks on need of sovereignty."
139 – the imposition of European gender relations equals a mechanism of colonization --> maintaining them will limit the ability to decolonize in the future
Native communities are beginning to design their own programs to rehabilitate criminals based on principles of "restorative justice". (140) restorative justice also incorporates community determined justice, aimed at restoring community wholeness.
160 – "that's our challenge is, how do we develop community based models of accountability in which the community will actually hold the perpetrator accountable?"
163 – the problem is that in recent decades, community is created by choice I'm not location –-> holding your neighbor accountable means first actually knowing them ––> which is not always possible in suburbia.
Chapter 8 – US empire in the war against native sovereignty
180 – Smith sees "the rhetoric of developing US domestic energy resources as a veiled attack against need of sovereignty."
Unfortunately "domestic" sources of energy are all too often resources from indigenous lands.
22 – "the constant undermining of the UN by the US hinders the ability of indigenous nations to gain recognition as sovereign nations
Introduction
Thesis: "This book will focus particularly on sexual violence as a tool of patriarchy and colonialism in native communities, both historically and today." (2) this book is also "an examination of how sexual violence serves the goals of colonialism (and) forces us to reconsider how we define sexual violence as well as the strategies we employe to eradicate gender violence." Page 3
Gender violence is the specific tool of racism and colonialism– "Colonial relationships are themselves gendered and sexualized".
"An examination of how sexual violence serves the goals of colonialism forces us to reconsider how we define sexual violence, as well as the strategies we employee to eradicate gender violence." (3)
Chapter 1 outlines how colonizers have historically used sexual violence as a primary tool of genocide, it also provides the theoretical framework for the rest of the book arguments sexual violence is a tool by which certain people become marked as rapable.
Page 7 -"Rape as "nothing more or less" Than a tool of Patriarchal control undergirds the philosophy of the white-dominated women's anti-violence movement."
Chapter 2 focuses on US and Canadian and American Indian boarding school policies which are largely responsible for epidemic rates of sexual violence in need of communities today."
There is a clear connection between the violence present in modern-day Native communities and the advent of the boarding school. Smith notes that When abuse victims are asked to Draw their family trees outlining the violence that has occurred within their families, the first generation that perpetrated violence usually the first generation to Have attended boarding schools.
Page 51 - boarding school violence is a State sanctioned human rights violation.
Page 54- Makes a call for a global reparations movement that unites all colonized peoples.
Chapter 3 analyzes how "environmental racism can be seen as a form of sexual violence against indigenous peoples."
Page 55-the same Colonial patriarchal Mind that seeks to control the sexuality of women and indigenous peoples also seeks to control nature."
Page 57- marginalized communities suffer the brunt of environmental destruction and racism so that mainstream communities don't have to suffer the consequences."
Page 62-"Rhetoric of environmentalists in terms of concern for earth masks other issues of racism and colonialism. "
Page 63 -call to eradicate The dualistic identity between humans and nature.
Chapter 4 looks at "contemporary manifestations of what I would call state-sponsored forms of sexual violence in racist reproductive policies." The author also argues that "the current "pro-choice" framework that undergirds the mainstream reproductive rights movement is in adequate for addressing the attacks on the reproductive rights of indigenous women, women of color, poor women, and women with disabilities."ter 5 examines "medical experimentation in native communities."
Chapter 6 "suggests that we can see spiritual appropriation as a form of sexual violence and explores how colonial ideology attempts to transform Native spiritualities from a site of healing to a site of sex sexual exploitation."
Chapter 7 "discusses what strategies for Eradicating gender violence follow from the analysis set forth in this book. it is clear That the state has a prominent role in perpetrating violence against Native women in particular and women of color in general."
Chapter 8" by examining Holland antivirus strategy that addresses the violence required antiviolence advocates to organize against US empire. If we acknowledge the state as a perpetrator of violence against women and the perpetrator of genocide against indigenous peoples we are challenged to imagine alternative forms of governance that do not presume the continuing existence of the US in Particular and the nation-state in general."
***
Chapter 1 – Sexual Violence as a Tool of Genocide
8 – "when a native woman suffers abuse, this abuse is an attack on her identity as a woman and an attack on her identity as Native. The issues of colonial, race, and gender oppression cannot be separated."
- Ann Stoler argues "that racism far from being a reaction to crisis in which racial others are scapegoated for social ills, is a permanent part of the social fabric."
9 – Kate Shanley "notes that native peoples are a permanent "present absence" in the US colonial imagination, and "absence" that reinforces at every turn the conviction that native peoples are indeed vanishing and that the conquest of native lands is justified."
– Need them bodies are a pollution which the colonial body must constantly purify itself against.
10 – Smith equates dirty bodies as "rape-able" bodies---> prostitutes are rapeable because their bodies are seen as violable.
11– Natives are also viewed as not quite real people which is also a set up for rape. When bodies are seen as dirty and sinful it becomes a sin to be who you are… Indian… Which leads to self-destruction.
12– Abuse has become so internalized within the indigenous community that rape is viewed as "traditional" by some Indians.
14 – Franz Fanon notes that these destructive behaviors are direct result of the colonial system.
15 – Women are important countercultural figures - their subjugation represent colonial victories in the fields of economic culture and political colonization.
16 – dysfunctional systems are maintained through pervasive systematic denial
17 – typically the women who are targeted "for destruction were those most independent from Patriarchal Authority: single women, windows, and healers."
20 – wife battering among the Ojibway began when their ability to live as Ojibwas was was banned and alcohol introduced.
23 – colonizers knew that they had to subjugate need women to succeed they did so by first establishing a system of patriarchal hierarchy.
24 – somewhat ironically "feminism is tied to colonial conquest - white women's liberation is founded upon the destruction of supposedly patriarchal need of societies."
25 – "assimilation into white society only increased native women's vulnerability to violence."
30 – victim blaming "the general response of the police to these murders is to blame the victim by arguing that their sex workers are lesbians, intense, inherently rapeable."
31 – "in Ex Parte Crow Dog (1883), the Supreme Court recognized the authority of Indian tribes over criminal jurisdiction on Indian lands. In response, the US passed the Major Crimes Act (1885) which mandated that certain "major crimes" committed in Indian country must be adjudicated through the federal justice system."
32 – "because rape falls under the Major Crimes Act, tribes are generally reliant upon the federal governments to prosecute sexual assault cases.… and because sexual assault is covered under the Major Crimes Act many tribes have not developed codes to address the problem in those rape cases the federal government declines to prosecute." Thus, many US policies and laws have codified rape of native women.
Chapter 2 – Boarding School Abuses and the Case for Reparations
36 – more than 100,000 native kids attended boarding schools the idea was to civilize or exterminate them.
37– 8 off reservation boarding schools are open today, 52 BIA boarding schools on reservations remain open.
"The primary role of this education for Indian girls was to inculcate patriarchal norms into native communities so that women would lose their place of leadership in native communities."
38 – "the Indian Child Protection Act of 1990 was passed to provide a registry for sexual offenders in Indian country, mandate a reporting system, provide BIA and IHS rigid guidelines for doing background checks on prospective employees, and provide education to parents, school officials, and law enforcement on how to recognize sexual abuse. However this law was never sufficiently funded or implemented, and child sexual abuse rates have been dramatically increasing in Indian country while they have remained stable for the general population."
41 – "in 1978, Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act which allows tribes to determine the placement of children taken from their homes. During the Congressional hearings for this act, Congress reported that 25% of all Indian children were in either foster care, adoptive homes, or boarding schools. … The hearings also found that the reasons children were taken from their homes were often vague and generally ethnocentric." Such as children "running wild". "Native families were and are often targeted because they did not fit the dominant nuclear family norm."
43 – abuse, both sexual and physical, became endemic in indigenous communities after the boarding schools.
49 – "...compensation does not end the colonial relationship between the US and indigenous nations. The struggle for a native sovereignty is a struggle for control over land and resources, rather than financial compensation for past and continuing wrongs."
Political sovereignty cannot be achieved without economic sovereignty.
51 – "No amount or type of reparations will "decolonize" us if we do not address oppressive behaviors that we have internalized."
52 – "...for native peoples in particular, there has never been a separation of church and state.…even today, made of people still do not have constitutional protection for their spiritual practices."
52–53 – Smith argues "If boarding school policies and the impact of these policies were recognized as human rights violations, some of the same attached talking about these issues would be removed, and communities could begin to heal."
54 – Smith calls for a global reparation movement that unites all colonized peoples and challenges the global economic system.
Chapter 3 – rape of the land
55 – "the connection between the colonization of native peoples bodies – particularly need women's bodies – a native lands is not simply metaphorical.… The colonial/patriarchal mind that seeks to control the sexuality of women and indigenous peoples also seeks to control nature."
56 – "this notion that need of people did not properly use land and hence had no title to it forms the basis of the "doctrine of discovery" which is the foundation of much US case law relating to Indian claims. This principle as articulated in Johnson and Graham's Lessee v. William McIntosh (1823) how old that the US federal government holds "Exclusive right to extinguish the Indian title of occupancy, either by purchase or conquest" by rate of discovery." "According to the Supreme Court, "the title by conquest is acquired and maintained by force. The conquer prescribes its limits."
57 – "marginalized communities suffer the primary brunt of environmental destruction so that other communities can remain in denial about the effects of environmental degradation." The examples given are: the pesticide exposure to Latino farmworkers which causes 300,000 pesticide related illnesses each year, and US nuclear waste storage.
60 - In 1903, it is ruled that US Congress has full plenary power of native peoples and lands. Lonewolf v. Hitchcock
63 - "It is racist and imperialist to look at the people who are dying now from environmental degradation (generally people of color and poor people) and say that it is a good thing that the earth is cleansing itself."
The AIDS crisis in Africa is given as another example that certain populations are seen as inherently dirty or polluted and therefore expendable.
69 – "medical research often conveniently overlooks the environmental causes of disease, placing the blame on native peoples themselves. Governments and multinational corporations are then left on accountable for their policies of environmental contamination. Native bodies will continue to be seen as expendable an inherently violable as long as they continue to stand in the way of the theft of native lands."
70 – colonialism has interfered with the natives natural methods of birth control and capitalist corporations push formula over breastmilk.
71 – "Unfortunately rather than look at the root causes of environmental destruction, poverty, and rapid population growth, population alarm a scapegoat "overpopulation" as the primary cause of all these problems, allowing corporations and governments to remain unaccountable."
People of color, indigenous peoples, and the impoverished, often in the global South, are made out to be the wrong sort of people who cause environmental damage to overpopulation but their impact pills to the damage done by multinational corporations and the World Bank.
Chapter 4 – "Better dead than pregnant" – the colonization of native women's reproductive health
79 – women of color are seen as particularly threatening as they have the ability to reproduce. Hence Andrew Jackson's order to exterminate native women and children. "Nits make lice"
81 – native women and poor women became targets of population control through "elective" sterilization procedures implemented in US hospitals during the 1970s and was paid for by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
82– At least 5% of all native women of childbearing age were sterilized between 1973 and 1976 in the United States. Some organizations report this number between 25 and as high as 50%.
85 – Peru sterilized around 200,000 indigenous women, only 10% of the sterilizations were done voluntarily and with informed consent.
88–89 – hormonal birth control, the safety of which is debated, has also been widely used to control poor and indigenous underclasses.
96 – despite the fact that governments have widely used sterilization and contraception to control indigenous populations the IHS will not provide abortions accept under limited circumstances. Furthermore there is evidence that doctors withheld anesthesia in order to teach their patients a lesson about getting pregnant and to encourage more women to get sterilized.
98– for native women "choice" is often an illusion. For both men and women the fight for self-determination and sovereignty in health care decisions is real and problematic.
Smith highlights how complicated uncritically adopting the pro-choice narrative is, and that organizations that pro-choice activists see as positive and supportive of women, have complicated pasts. For example, Planned Parenthood ground of the eugenics movement and continues to see family planning in the context of population control. Thus, Smith advocates rejecting the pro-choice framework. She sees "such a strategy would enable us to fight for reproductive justice as part of a larger social justice strategy.
104 – Suggests that reproductive justice must also include dismantling of capitalism, wait supremacy and colonialism. Single issue campaigns are not useful.
Chapter 5 – "natural laboratories": medical experimentation in native communities
111-113 - The medical community has a history of using indigenous populations as test subjects to discover problems in medical trials in order to use that information to benefit other, i.e. dominant, populations.
114- experiments were done to children without parental consent because the state was in charge of children at boarding schools and away from the visible community.
115 – Smith cites Luana Ross on the use of Thorazine to keep Indian women, and prisons.
"since 1997, 16 of the 49 IHS hospitals did not meet the minimum standards in one or more areas set by the joint commission on accreditation of healthcare organizations, which monitors national quality standards for hospitals."
116- "bio colonialism represents yet another way in which governments use Indians as objects of white people." Fairstein is the expendable guinea pigs of the colonizers - they are seen to deserve rape, destruction, and mutilation.
Chapter 6 – spiritual appropriation of sexual violence
120 – knowledge about someone is power over them there for withholding info is an active resistance.
120-121 - It is falsely believed that many people oppress indigenous people from lack of understanding or value of native cultures; however, "the primary reason for the continuing genocide of native peoples have less to do with ignorance and more to do with material conditions… Indians occupy land resources the dominant society wants.… The larger society will never become educated about Indians because it is not in their economic interest to do so."
122 – courts do not recognize the difference between belief centered spiritualities and land-based spiritualities. The failure to recognize the importance of land for indigenous spirituality not only leads to the divorce of Indians from their land, but in essence to cultural genocide because Alienates them from their beliefs.
"When the dominant society disconnects need of spiritual practices from their land basis, it undermines native peoples' claim that the protection of the land base is integral to the survival of native peoples and hence undermined their claims to sovereignty. Such appropriation is prevalent in a wide variety of cultural and spiritual practices – from New Agers claiming to be Indians in former lives to Christians adopting native spiritual forms to further their missionizing efforts."
123 – native knowledge has become appropriated and patented by multinational corporations and by outsiders i.e. non-natives. It is frequently seen as public property and not as indigenous intellectual or cultural property.
"Non-natives feel justified in appropriating native spirituality and native identity because they do not believe existing native communities are capable of independently preserving native cultural practices."
132–133 - Smith warns academics to be careful of the Ethnographic Gaze - for outsiders to be wary of the appropriate protocols when dealing with indigenous peoples.
Chapter 7 – Anti colonial responses to gender violence
137 – "Before native peoples fight for the future of their nations, they must ask themselves, who is included in the nation?"
138 – "according to the US department of justice statistics, Indian women suffer death rates twice as high as any other women in this country from domestic violence. We are clearly not surviving as long as issues of gender violence go unaddressed."
"We must understand that attacks on native women status are themselves attacks on need of sovereignty."
139 – the imposition of European gender relations equals a mechanism of colonization --> maintaining them will limit the ability to decolonize in the future
Native communities are beginning to design their own programs to rehabilitate criminals based on principles of "restorative justice". (140) restorative justice also incorporates community determined justice, aimed at restoring community wholeness.
160 – "that's our challenge is, how do we develop community based models of accountability in which the community will actually hold the perpetrator accountable?"
163 – the problem is that in recent decades, community is created by choice I'm not location –-> holding your neighbor accountable means first actually knowing them ––> which is not always possible in suburbia.
Chapter 8 – US empire in the war against native sovereignty
180 – Smith sees "the rhetoric of developing US domestic energy resources as a veiled attack against need of sovereignty."
Unfortunately "domestic" sources of energy are all too often resources from indigenous lands.
22 – "the constant undermining of the UN by the US hinders the ability of indigenous nations to gain recognition as sovereign nations
Read
February 24, 2016"Whether it is our reliance on the criminal justice system to protect women from violence or the legitimacy of the U.S. as a colonial nation state, Andrea Smith's incisive and courageous analysis cuts through many of our accepted truths and reveals a new way of knowing rooted in Native women's histories of struggle. More than a call for action, this book provides sophisticated strategies and practical examples of organizing that simultaneously take on state and interpersonal violence. Conquest is a must read not only for those concerned with violence against women and Native sovereignty, but also for antiracist, reproductive rights, environmental justice, antiprison, immigrant rights, and antiwar activists."
— Julia Sudbury, editor of Global Lockdown: Race, Gender, and the Prison Industrial Complex
"Give thanks for the very great honor of listening to Andrea Smith. This book will burn a hole right through your mind with its accurate analysis and the concise compilation of information that makes it the first of its kind. Conquest is not only instructive, it is healing. I want every Indian I know to read it."
— Chrystos, artist, poet, and activist
"Conquest radically rethinks the historical scope and dimensionality of 'sexual violence,' a historical vector of bodily domination that is too often reduced to universalizing—hence racist—narratives of gendered oppression and resistance. Offering a breathtaking genealogy of white supremacist genocide and colonization in North America, this book provides a theoretical model that speaks urgently to a broad continuum of political and intellectual traditions. In this incisive and stunningly comprehensive work, we learn how the proliferation of sexual violence as a normalized feature of modern Euro American patriarchies is inseparable from violence against Indigenous women, and women of color. In Conquest, Andrea Smith has presented us with an epochal challenge, one that should productively disrupt and perhaps transform our visions of liberation and radical freedom."
— Dylan Rodríguez, University of California, Riverside
"Conquest is not for those who flinch from an honest examination of white supremacist history, or who shy away from today's controversies in the reproductive health and anti violence movements. This book is a tough, thoughtful, and passionate analysis of the colonization of America and the resistance of Indigenous women. Andrea Smith is one of this country's premiere intellectuals and a good old fashioned organizer—a rare combination that illuminates her praxis and gift to social justice movement building in the 21st century."
— Loretta Ross, coauthor of Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice and cofounder of Sister Song Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective
— Julia Sudbury, editor of Global Lockdown: Race, Gender, and the Prison Industrial Complex
"Give thanks for the very great honor of listening to Andrea Smith. This book will burn a hole right through your mind with its accurate analysis and the concise compilation of information that makes it the first of its kind. Conquest is not only instructive, it is healing. I want every Indian I know to read it."
— Chrystos, artist, poet, and activist
"Conquest radically rethinks the historical scope and dimensionality of 'sexual violence,' a historical vector of bodily domination that is too often reduced to universalizing—hence racist—narratives of gendered oppression and resistance. Offering a breathtaking genealogy of white supremacist genocide and colonization in North America, this book provides a theoretical model that speaks urgently to a broad continuum of political and intellectual traditions. In this incisive and stunningly comprehensive work, we learn how the proliferation of sexual violence as a normalized feature of modern Euro American patriarchies is inseparable from violence against Indigenous women, and women of color. In Conquest, Andrea Smith has presented us with an epochal challenge, one that should productively disrupt and perhaps transform our visions of liberation and radical freedom."
— Dylan Rodríguez, University of California, Riverside
"Conquest is not for those who flinch from an honest examination of white supremacist history, or who shy away from today's controversies in the reproductive health and anti violence movements. This book is a tough, thoughtful, and passionate analysis of the colonization of America and the resistance of Indigenous women. Andrea Smith is one of this country's premiere intellectuals and a good old fashioned organizer—a rare combination that illuminates her praxis and gift to social justice movement building in the 21st century."
— Loretta Ross, coauthor of Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice and cofounder of Sister Song Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective
December 1, 2013
In this breakthrough book, Andrea Smith analyses how in order to successfully colonize American Indians, First Nations and Inuits, the U.S and Canadian nation states have employed sexualized violence. Rendering Native women inherently violable, meant their lands were inherently violable. She details the barbaric ways Europeans raped and slaughtered Natives in order to cleanse the body politic of ‘pollutants’. Simultaneously Europeans sought to instill patriarchy in the gender egalitarian systems of Natives in order to normalize hierarchy and to ensure white women wouldn’t object to their oppression by white men. This was most successfully accomplished by the residential boarding school systems which indoctrinated natives into hyper-violent white culture. Many girls were also sterilized there. Smith details the ways Native women have been manipulated and coerced to sterilization, have been medically tested on, and have had industrial pollutants dumped on their lands. The statistics of how many natives and POC are affected by these policies and how pervasive they are, was eye-opening. Also eye-opening was her exposure of the racism of environmental, pro-choice, population control, and reproduction advocates like Planned Parenthood. Smith goes on to provide alternative ways that we can counter violence against women other than through the state. She gives examples of restorative justice projects, reparations as a human right, and organizations not reliant on state funding. I found this section of the book the most educational and definitely pertinent to my own activism.
This is now one of the slogans that I will carry with me into my activism: ‘when you go to power without a base, your demand becomes a request’.
Because I had already read The Color of Violence: The Incite! Anthology and studied on Canadian Residential Schools, the only chapters that were a revelation for me were the exposes on the leftist groups and the strategies we can use to make our communities more whole.
I think this book should be studied though by all North Americans, because other than the American Indians, First Nations, Inuits and Métis, the rest of us are part of the settler project, and we are accountable for it.
This is now one of the slogans that I will carry with me into my activism: ‘when you go to power without a base, your demand becomes a request’.
Because I had already read The Color of Violence: The Incite! Anthology and studied on Canadian Residential Schools, the only chapters that were a revelation for me were the exposes on the leftist groups and the strategies we can use to make our communities more whole.
I think this book should be studied though by all North Americans, because other than the American Indians, First Nations, Inuits and Métis, the rest of us are part of the settler project, and we are accountable for it.
June 14, 2013
This is one of the most brilliant and informative books I have ever read. Andrea Smith is a genius. I was captivated from the first word.
This is one of those books that should be mandated for every child in high school. I bet people would be surprised to learn that "liberal" orgs who are all about women's rights and environmentalism (ex. Sierra Club) actually advocate for policies that effectively destroy - physically and mentally - communities of color, esp native peoples. I'm reminded of that one story where the Sierra Club aligned with white supremacists to target natives, as if natives and not huge corporate companies are the ones responsible for environmental destruction!! Again, not many activists probe deeper into these issues.
One of the other lessons I learned? Political labels are misleading.
Planned Parenthood: Loved by the"Pro-choicers," provides valuable planning resources to women. Women of color are told to ally with them. Yet the roots of the org. are in the eugenics movement. Margaret Sanger, the founder, collaborated with eugenics orgs during her career, linking need for birth control to need to reduce the number of those in the 'lower classes.' And today - PP is heavily invested in population control policies, esp in the Global South (in areas with WOC with very little to zero power, often subjected to cruel sterilization procedures and cancer-causing birth control).
North Baton Rouge Women's Help Center in Louisiana: A crisis pregnancy center that articulates its pro-life position from an anti-racist perspective. Argues PP engages in population control mostly among people of color. Instead, provides holistic approach to helping women have children and raise them, to give them a variety of economic, educational resources, etc. Has helped numerous women of color altho denies them the right to an abortion.
Neither org. alone is appropriate, clearly, and both are somewhat detrimental and somewhat helpful to women, especially WOC. Point is - we should all be careful not to blindly align with orgs/ideas simply bc they fall along party lines - we may be hurting the very people we're trying to help.
This is one of those books that should be mandated for every child in high school. I bet people would be surprised to learn that "liberal" orgs who are all about women's rights and environmentalism (ex. Sierra Club) actually advocate for policies that effectively destroy - physically and mentally - communities of color, esp native peoples. I'm reminded of that one story where the Sierra Club aligned with white supremacists to target natives, as if natives and not huge corporate companies are the ones responsible for environmental destruction!! Again, not many activists probe deeper into these issues.
One of the other lessons I learned? Political labels are misleading.
Planned Parenthood: Loved by the"Pro-choicers," provides valuable planning resources to women. Women of color are told to ally with them. Yet the roots of the org. are in the eugenics movement. Margaret Sanger, the founder, collaborated with eugenics orgs during her career, linking need for birth control to need to reduce the number of those in the 'lower classes.' And today - PP is heavily invested in population control policies, esp in the Global South (in areas with WOC with very little to zero power, often subjected to cruel sterilization procedures and cancer-causing birth control).
North Baton Rouge Women's Help Center in Louisiana: A crisis pregnancy center that articulates its pro-life position from an anti-racist perspective. Argues PP engages in population control mostly among people of color. Instead, provides holistic approach to helping women have children and raise them, to give them a variety of economic, educational resources, etc. Has helped numerous women of color altho denies them the right to an abortion.
Neither org. alone is appropriate, clearly, and both are somewhat detrimental and somewhat helpful to women, especially WOC. Point is - we should all be careful not to blindly align with orgs/ideas simply bc they fall along party lines - we may be hurting the very people we're trying to help.
January 13, 2015
Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide is one of the increasing number of books that leaves me absolutely speechless with rage. I've read plenty that evokes a visceral reaction in some capacity, but it's an entirely different matter when the subject of the book is a real life thing that happened to someone. And that's all that Andrea Smith discusses in this book.
It's an extremely well-researched and in-depth look at Native American history and exploitation, aimed specifically at women of color in Native communities all across the country. Smith touches on a variety of topics, from the lack of prosecution for sexual assaults, to population control and vaccine use as a form of birth control, to secret sterilization programs that the government has used to keep Native communities losing members and stature in a society they once knew how to be a part of.
I was floored by so many sections of the book that detailed the abuses suffered by Native women at the hands of the government, society, or even some of the institutions that claim to do so much good charity work (e.g. Planned Parenthood, other 501(c)3 nonprofits or churches). I couldn't believe some of the things I was reading had actually taken place, and I ended the book with a massive list of things to research further into.
It's difficult to sum up this book into a single review, because that's just how powerful it was. But Smith so brilliantly assembles an actually good look into Native genocide and cultural abuse through the lens of more mainstream feminist movements, such as Western medicine, white supremacy, or using the environment as a weapon against American Indian peoples. The book covers so much staggering material in a relatively quick read.
It's an extremely well-researched and in-depth look at Native American history and exploitation, aimed specifically at women of color in Native communities all across the country. Smith touches on a variety of topics, from the lack of prosecution for sexual assaults, to population control and vaccine use as a form of birth control, to secret sterilization programs that the government has used to keep Native communities losing members and stature in a society they once knew how to be a part of.
I was floored by so many sections of the book that detailed the abuses suffered by Native women at the hands of the government, society, or even some of the institutions that claim to do so much good charity work (e.g. Planned Parenthood, other 501(c)3 nonprofits or churches). I couldn't believe some of the things I was reading had actually taken place, and I ended the book with a massive list of things to research further into.
It's difficult to sum up this book into a single review, because that's just how powerful it was. But Smith so brilliantly assembles an actually good look into Native genocide and cultural abuse through the lens of more mainstream feminist movements, such as Western medicine, white supremacy, or using the environment as a weapon against American Indian peoples. The book covers so much staggering material in a relatively quick read.
October 18, 2013
This was a great read. It really opens your eyes to the dynamics of conquest, in result the reader can see that play out in ways that conquest and cultural imperialism still happens today. People always act like cultural appropriation and sexualizing native women is no big deal. This book explains how sexualizing native women has been a tool for conquest, therefore it IS a big deal. It also expands on other instances of cultural appropriation or ways that native american's identities are trivialized and how this affects bigger issues. For example when natives protested a burial ground and those in power would just say, essentially, well you're mixed blood or you dont fit what i believe to be "native american" so your opinion doesnt matter. That right there is an example of why stereotypes such as the ones in mascots are harmful.
It also speaks of the ways that new agers take from native cultures with no remorse and how this is a product of the rape culture of the united states. Im using this book as a source for my research on the sexualization of native women. It has been helpful in giving me citations as well as perspectives i can think about.
Definitely recommend for natives and allies who want to speak out against cultural imperialism/appropriation as well as to those who perpetuate it.
It also speaks of the ways that new agers take from native cultures with no remorse and how this is a product of the rape culture of the united states. Im using this book as a source for my research on the sexualization of native women. It has been helpful in giving me citations as well as perspectives i can think about.
Definitely recommend for natives and allies who want to speak out against cultural imperialism/appropriation as well as to those who perpetuate it.
September 26, 2012
A severely horrific book about stuff most Native's hear about but don't know the extent of the extinction agenda being enacted upon us as a people. Women in this book, and in reality get it the worse. Violations on all fronts. Raped in every concievable way possible. I could go on and on but there is just so much in this book that saddens one's heart and spark a renewed anger. The language like most Native American books would even challange English born speakers into submission. That is the only real criticism I have about this book. Preaching to the choir is always great but other people need to have this book accessible to them. It's funny in the book that English is not a first language for many of the Women that are violated and in a way this book does the same disservice by being a very upper Eduacation text book with complicated language usage. I don't see this book being read by the Women that need to read it but then again I may be wrong.
July 5, 2014
A professor of mine that I greatly admire gave this book to me about two years ago, and I just got around to reading it. I was absolutely floored by the brilliance of Prof. Smith's argument against the US Empire and its use of sexual violence (bodily, environmentally and metaphorically) as a means of oppression for particularly indigenous women, but against all people of color (and all people in general!).
Prof. Smith's argument is not only well supported; it is passionate and creative. Her take on the white, patriarchal, heteronormative and capitalist social structures at play in American society is skillfully communicated.
Although this book is not necessarily an easy or fun read, I believe that it is necessary in understanding the challenges and injustices in society at large. A very fresh and heartfelt take on American colonialism and the ways in which it marginalizes many.
Prof. Smith's argument is not only well supported; it is passionate and creative. Her take on the white, patriarchal, heteronormative and capitalist social structures at play in American society is skillfully communicated.
Although this book is not necessarily an easy or fun read, I believe that it is necessary in understanding the challenges and injustices in society at large. A very fresh and heartfelt take on American colonialism and the ways in which it marginalizes many.
November 20, 2016
I could have finished the book more quickly if some of the content were not so disturbing.
It put together many things I had already heard of, like contraception being used against a people, and how the environmental movement needs to be working with the Indians or it cannot succeed, and how the groups working to prevent domestic violence often increase it. Smith gave some good ideas on applications of restorative justice. All of that makes the book very worth reading.
It is also hard reading. The tales of the medical abuses, police abuses, and the results of nuclear testing on Marshall Islanders are all things that will disturb and stay with you.
Edited to add that the issues is in no way due to graphic descriptions of sexual violence. While personal assaults are acknowledged as an issue, the books is more about the attitudes and patterns that allow for that and for other violence.
It put together many things I had already heard of, like contraception being used against a people, and how the environmental movement needs to be working with the Indians or it cannot succeed, and how the groups working to prevent domestic violence often increase it. Smith gave some good ideas on applications of restorative justice. All of that makes the book very worth reading.
It is also hard reading. The tales of the medical abuses, police abuses, and the results of nuclear testing on Marshall Islanders are all things that will disturb and stay with you.
Edited to add that the issues is in no way due to graphic descriptions of sexual violence. While personal assaults are acknowledged as an issue, the books is more about the attitudes and patterns that allow for that and for other violence.
August 19, 2008
Smith writes an amazing book and the critical connections she makes are phenomenal. It was a difficult read for myself a white, middle-class priveleged woman but it certainly changed the way I look at the world and my responsibility for what has occured in history. I think this book provided one of those key turning points for me in that like slavery and contemporary racism, I can no longer say that I am not responsible but rather what am I going to do now that I recognize my role in the oppression of other people. If I had to say something bad about this book was that sometimes Smith's writing is very sharp and direct and I tend to enjoy "pretty" writing. I do admit to myself, however that the message was not meant to be buffeted but rather slap the reader with the message and Smith's writing style does this.
November 1, 2008
LOVE this book! go read it right now! andrea smith writes an INCREDIBLE book about the sexual violence practiced against all american indians in the last 500 years, & especially indian women. it was published by boston's own south end press, which made me so proud to live in boston. this book blew mymind--well-researched, passionate, straightforward, full of important information, & best of all, smith uses her brilliant mind to brainstorm solutions to many of the problems she addresses, & many of her ideas involve the kind of awesome community responses that regular everyday people can implement without having to run for office or lobby anyone or concede to power. i should go read this again. i should go read it again, in the face of the great winds of change sweeping across the american nation.
June 10, 2009
This is an utterly eye-opening, fierce, and challenging book which makes a compelling link between sexual violence and American colonialism, both historical and contemporary. Some of what she writes about historical violence against American Indians was known to me, but her exploration of present-day abuses was much newer to me, surprising and horrifying. I was particularly struck by the chapters on environmental racism (and will be looking much more closely at the mail I get from the Sierra Club), medical experimentation, and sterilization abuse, and the penultimate chapter on strategies for fighting gender violence. I was especially impressed, in fact, with the way that Smith doesn't stop with documenting the issues; she also focuses on how to solve them. It wasn't an easy book to read, but it is shocking and illuminating and important, and I'm glad I read it.
March 6, 2017
Not an easy read very academic and intelligent something best read in a library rather than on a crowded cross-town bus, still a clear criticism of colonial hierarchy system with offering alternative although not always clear how this fits in various native realities except for a repeated calls for creating community based solutions. Strong on analysis weaker on applications and method except when visualizing a woman-lead spiritually center movement that sounded very much like a 12-step approach modified to focus on violence prevention by ways of connection and commitment and responsibility development. I get it don't think it's a political model but good local one worth the read for those interested in the subject but some of the material is dated. (wonder if the writer was upset by Bush what her take on Trump administration would be)
August 23, 2017
Extremely well thought through look at the genocide of the Native American people and the continuing violent systems that oppress them and in particular Native women. I couldn't recommend this book highly enough. Since colonization and invasion has affected many Indigenous communities in similar ways I believe that this book is also really valuable for people outside of the US, especially seeing as the US itself continues to negatively impact Native communities abroad as well (through war, invasion, medical experimentation etc). I only have some minor complaints, some chapters are a shade too long whilst others a bit under developed. There's a section about vaccines and autism I felt a bit wary of, though the history of abuse from the medical community and of medical experimentation was thoroughly explored.
October 28, 2016
Took my time with this one. I am glad I stuck with it. Reading it 11 years after it was published, it seems like it could have been written yesterday. I was initially so put off by the section of the "rape of the land" chapter directly equating environmental destruction with rape that I expected I would not like the rest of the book. I could go into the problems with this in detail but I won't for brevity's sake. Upon finishing the book I found myself educated by or in complete agreement with the rest. I also always appreciate a book that offers solutions with its critiques and Smith does a lot of that very well. It spans many intersections of race, gender, class, nation, ability, and even species. So, 5 stars even with the problematic section.
September 24, 2007
Andrea Smith aptly writes on the white patriarchal colonial nation-states' (United States & Canada) campaigns of sexual violence and genocide against indigenous populations. I did not quite follow Smith's argument that spiritual appropriation is sexual in its violent nature, but maybe I just need to re-read this chapter. Most exciting to me was the chapter providing examples of responses to colonialisms and more possible remedies.
March 28, 2014
this has a lot of really important things to say about sexual violence against native women in the united states (native women are more than twice as likely to be sexually assaulted than any other ethnic group). it's also full of a lot of conspiracy theory-the vaccines are killing us-pretty out there stuff. however, that's only a minor distraction from the cold, hard facts. worth understanding that the ripples and echoes of genocide continue in these women's lives today.
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